Jurassic World: Rebirth - Review 

Rating: 4 out of 5

GARETH Edwards looks to re-energise the Jurassic World franchise with a new entry featuring fresh characters - but the ensuing film isn’t so much a Rebirth as a greatest hits mash up of Steven Spielberg’s best moments.

By returning to the format of the original, though, this seventh film in the saga somehow feels exciting, tense and frequently thrilling, expertly delivering some virtuoso set pieces that elevate it to one of the best in the series.

Edwards has form in this genre, of course - and knows his way around a blockbuster. He opened his directing account with the hugely impressive Monsters - which featured special effects he had created in his bedroom, alongside a very human and intelligent story.

The success of that paved the way for the likes of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (albeit with sizeable assistance from Tony Gilroy), the under-rated but sombre Godzilla reboot and the impressive sci-fi stunner The Creator.

Here, he’s working off a script from original Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp, who also turns back the clock to the type of visitors in peril scenario that fed the genre-defining original.

The visitors in question are more of an extraction team, who have been enlisted by a shady pharmaceutical boss (Rupert Friend) to acquire the blood of three types of dinosaur: one sea-based, one aerial and one from the land, in the hope that the blood samples will help with a cure for heart disease. The only trouble is, the island they’re headed to is an abandoned research facility housing mutant creations and the worst of the worst killers.

The team is led by Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), an ex-military type, and her regular collaborator Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), an easy-going boat captain, and includes a sensitive palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), who would rather see the drugs made available to everyone than just big pharma.

En route, they also pick up a shipwrecked family - comprising dad Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), daughters Teresa (Luna Blaine) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and tag-along, layabout boyfriend Xavier (David Iacano) - who also manage to become separated from the team once at the island, thereby creating adventures on two fronts.

It’s fair to say that, seven films in, the Jurassic World franchise has long lost the originality that made Spielberg’s original such a classic and so groundbreaking.

But various sequels have, to varying degrees of success, put different spins on proceedings - with Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World reboot and JA Bayona’s Fallen Kingdom two of my favourite.

Edwards’ entry also rates among the best, in spite of a weak story, by virtue of the director’s ability to deliver a great set piece.

Here, he sets things in motion with a neat establishing scenario that feels more in keeping with the horror genre (not to mention a neat cautionary tale on why you shouldn’t litter), before then unleashing a genuinely spectacular and thrilling set piece in the form of a sea-based attack by a Mosasaurus.

Once more, Edwards has fun riffing on the sea-based sequences from Spielberg’s own classic Jaws, with the dinosaur resembling the shark (as well as a humpback whale) in the way in appears and then disappears, eluding attempts to tag it (or extract its blood). It’s an effective show and tell sequence: part tense, part adrenaline rush.

But it effectively establishes Rebirth as a film that boasts great effects.

And from here on in, it consistently delivers. A T-Rex attack mixes humour with genuine tension, there’s a neat spin on a toilet visit as one character’s departure for a quick pee dabbles in a bit of sleight of hand involving a previous fan favourite dinosaur, and the attack of the Quetzalcoatlus - aka a “flying carnivore the size of an F-16” - is so well shot that it’s likely to induce a feeling of vertigo if seen on the big screen, while also riffing on the kind of rope-hanging tension of Cliffhanger.

If the belated introduction of the film’s biggest mutant creation, the Distortus Rex, underwhelms somewhat (and runs perilously close to the kind of ill-advised mutation that ruined the endings of Alien: Resurrection and Alien: Romulus), then there’s still enough going on in the final showdown to maintain the film’s breathless momentum and sustain its tension.

Indeed, it’s during these moments that you even realise how invested you’ve become in most of the surviving characters, particularly as the fate of one hangs in the balance in a surprisingly moving way.

But therein lies another strength of the movie. Edwards allows room for his cast to breathe, thereby allowing Johansson and Bailey to build an endearing chemistry, Ali to combine tragedy and bravery as the caring boat captain and Garcia-Rulfo and family to engage enough to not feel like an unnecessary distraction.

And if the plot beats surrounding most characters are generic, the cast still manages to shake this off and make them all likeable - even wrong-footing expectations in a couple of instances.

Friend’s main villain also feels suitably hiss-worthy without being over-played.

Some critics have lamented the failure of Rebirth to engage on the same kind of intellectual level as Koepp’s original script for Jurassic Park - but while light on too much theorising, it does contain some nuggets about the arrogance of man and his complicity in his own demise, as well as observations on corporations and the dangers of playing God (a recurring theme throughout the series).

The film even operates on its own meta level, seemingly appearing at pains to atone for the mistakes of entries past (most notably Dominion) by using the near-extinction of the city dwelling dinosaurs from that film as a means of providing the franchise’s own rebirth.

This is very much a back to basics approach, with a more cynical edge (perhaps befitting the world we’re now in). Where Richard Attenborough’s park creator operated on hope (creating a theme park experience), these characters are either profit-chasing capitalists, world-weary survivors or immigrants just trying to get by.

Yet thanks to Edwards’ expert direction, Rebirth has the bite to match its bark, emerging as a rip-roaring thrill-ride that should leave audiences suitably breathless and invigorated.

Certificate: 12A

Running time: 2hrs 13mins